


Dream of a Place Called Home

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:30:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's stuck inside with a twisted ankle, but there are plenty of things to keep a kid busy at the Meeks house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream of a Place Called Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elanurel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanurel/gifts).



> This is set in the universe of [](http://elanurel.livejournal.com/profile)[**elanurel**](http://elanurel.livejournal.com/)'s [Your Sorrow for Another Coin](http://community.livejournal.com/the_lilac_wind/tag/verse:+your+sorrow+for+another+coin), but the only thing you need to know is that Jane Meeks is an herbalist witch and a friend of the Winchesters. This was written for [](http://elanurel.livejournal.com/profile)[**elanurel**](http://elanurel.livejournal.com/)'s birthday, and she also kindly beta'd. Title from Kim Richey's song "A Place Called Home."

Sam sat in the window of Miss Jane's house, looking at the big tree outside and the dirt road. Dad had driven off toward the main road a couple of hours before--he'd been talking to a man, one of Miss Jane's friends, and then the man left in his pickup truck and Dad followed in the Impala. Sam didn't know if he was going to sell the man some life insurance or what, but he said he might not be back until real, real late at night. Or even the next day.

Dean and Alice were outside, but Sam couldn't see them anymore. They'd run around and around the big tree until they both fell down, and then they got up and ran off into the field on the other side of the house. They'd been gone a long time, but there were a lot of interesting things to see around Miss Jane's house. One time Alice showed them a burrow full of bunnies--one big mass of breathing, fuzzy fur hidden under a bush. They didn't touch, just looked, but Sam wriggled up close enough to see the bunnies moving against each other, just a little, as they slept. Another time they found a hole in the ground with a million ants coming out of it, and they went looking for wild mushrooms after it rained. They found big spongy caps that they didn't eat for dinner, but Miss Jane said thank you for them anyway.

Sam would have given anything to be able to run around with Dean and Alice, but he'd twisted his stupid ankle on the swing set at the last motel where they'd stayed. He was trying to show up Dean, jumping from higher up, and it had been awesome. He pushed off from the swing and felt himself flying out in an arc toward the ground. Then he landed, and his ankle bent under him wrong, and it hurt, a blinding jolt of pain all the way from his foot to his knee. He fell on his side, crying like a dumb baby, but when Dean landed beside him with a solid thud he didn't laugh at all.

Dad had been loading the car, getting them ready to head out to his next job, and when Dean called for him he was there in what felt like two seconds. Sam hid his face in Dean's shoulder as Dad checked out his ankle, but Dad's hands didn't hurt. They felt big and warm, and Sam thought maybe he hadn't really hurt himself at all. Then Dad pulled off his sneaker and sock. He bent Sam's ankle up down, and that felt okay, but then he bent it from side to side. It hurt, it hurt, and Sam felt tears in his eyes before Dad stopped and patted Sam's bare foot.

"It's not broken, just a sprain. Dean, relax; he'll be fine." And Sam thought that was pretty weird, that Dad thought Dean needed to relax. "Come on Sammy, look at me."

Sam pulled his face away from Dean's shoulder and looked up at Dad where he was crouching next to them. "You'll be okay. I'm going to stop on the way out of town to get some ice, and we'll stop the swelling before it gets out of hand. You just need to take it easy for a few days, don't go running around and twisting it again."

"Yes sir," Sam mumbled. His right ankle already looked fatter than the left, and when he poked at it, it felt a little squishy.

"We're going to stay at Jane Meek's place for a little bit, so maybe Jane can put some kind of smelly concoction on there, make it get better faster."

Dean perked up next to Sam. "We're going to see Alice?"

"Isn't that what I just said?" Dad smirked a little and then shifted his weight like he was ready to stand up. "Come on, I'll give you a ride."

Dad almost never carried Sam anymore. Sam was okay with that because he was big, almost six and a quarter, but still it felt good to climb up under his father's arm. He wrapped his legs around Dad's waist, and then they rose together. Way up there, Sam was taller than Dean. That felt good enough to make him forget about the dull throb of his ankle for a couple of minutes.

Dad set him up sideways in the back seat, wrapped his foot up tight in a stretchy bandage and then propped it up on a folded blanket on Dean's lap. When they stopped to get gas, Dad put some ice in a big zip-lock baggie and laid it over a towel on Sam's ankle. At first it didn't feel cold at all, like the towel was blocking all the cold, but then he felt it. It was good and weird all at the same time. Dad bought them both cans of Coke, and Sam had to take a Tylenol with his, but that was okay. He was grown up enough to know how to swallow pills, and it was worth it for the Coke. Miss Jane's house was really cool, but she never had very much soda there. Sam liked iced tea okay, but it definitely wasn't the same thing.

~~~

Sam slid down from the window seat and went looking for something to do. Walking was a little bit hard, but Sam could do it. He hopped on one foot for a while until he couldn't hold his balance anymore, and then he limped slowly, trying not to move his hurt ankle too much. Miss Jane was upstairs, but the stairs were kind of hard without anybody to help him, so Sam just made his slow, shuffling way around the downstairs. He and Dean were usually supposed to stay out of Miss Jane's herb room, but Sam wasn't going to hurt anything, so he went inside.

The room had a lot of windows. They caught all the afternoon sunshine and made the room warmer than the rest of the house. Bundles of all kinds of plants and flowers hung from the rafters, some of them looking like they had just come out of the garden and others all shriveled up, dry and gray. More things sat around on the workbench, and shelves full of glass jars lined one side of the room. Sam sat down on the floor with his left leg tucked up under him and his right leg stretched out flat. He craned his head back to look at everything hanging over him and then closed his eyes, trying to sort out all the different scents from each other.

He could smell things that were sharp and bitter and made him think of big green Mr. Yuck stickers. Other things smelled earthy, like the dirt on Dad's clothes sometimes. And some things were sweet, perfume that couldn't cover up all the nasty things but still made him want to keep smelling them, inhaling deep through his nose even when he had to stop and sneeze into the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"Samuel."

Sam jerked up out of his daze and turned around to see Miss Jane standing in the doorway, looming with her big, long skirt and her big, long hair. "I didn't touch anything, I swear!"

"I know." She held up her hand, and Sam relaxed a little. "How about you helping me with some of my work?"

"I can't really walk around good."

"I know that too." She knelt down next to Sam and covered Sam's ankle with one cool hand. "Don't you remember me putting that poultice on your ankle after you got here last night? It looks good, not too swollen."

Sam did remember, now that she said it. He'd been all sleepy by the time they arrived in Kentucky, but he could remember Dad carrying him up to bed and Miss Jane coming behind him with something smelly and damp. She put it over his ankle and cupped a hand behind his head as she gave him one of her weird teas to drink, and then he fell asleep.

"Can I really help?"

"I think so." She smiled and wrapped her arm around Sam's back, helping him to stand up. "Alice's been helping me in here since she was younger than you, so I think we'll manage. Come on, let me give you a boost up."

Sam nodded, and she put her hands around his middle. As she lifted him up to sit on a high wooden stool at the workbench, Sam thought her hands felt almost as strong as Dad's. When Sam was steady on the bench, she reached out and picked up something that looked like a weird bowl made out of stone. It had a thing in it that Sam thought was a spoon at first, but it didn't have any part that went in, and the only way he could imagine eating with it was sticking it in something like pudding and then licking the pudding off of it.

Sam tipped his head up to look at Miss Jane. "D'you have any pudding?"

One of Miss Jane's eyebrows crawled way up her forehead, and she shook her head. "No, but I have a lot of herbs and other things that need to be ground up. This is a mortar." She held up the bowl in one hand and then pulled the not-spoon thing out with her other hand. "And this is a pestle. I think I'll start you with some rosemary. I'm baking some bread tonight; what do you think?"

Sam shrugged his shoulders. There was a girl in one of his kindergarten classes named Rosemary, but he was pretty sure this was a different thing. Miss Jane pulled a step-stool down from a hook on the wall and carried it into the middle of the room. With a small knife in her hand, she climbed up the steps, reached up over her head, and cut down one of the bundles that was hanging from the ceiling. When she brought it over, Sam thought it looked a little bit like a piece of a Christmas tree, and it smelled like that too, sort of. Jane cut one of the branches away and then held it over the bowl--the mortar--and used her fingers to push all the dry little needles down off of the twig.

"Let me show you what to do. See, you hold onto the mortar with one hand and use the pestle with your other hand to crush up the herbs." She twisted the pestle against the bottom of the bowl, and the sharp, fresh smell of the needles made Sam's eyes sting for a moment. "Feel like giving it a try?"

Sam nodded and reached for the mortar and pestle. He leaned forward, right up to the edge of the table, and pulled the mortar in close, clutching it to his chest to hold it still. He thought about helping Dean make eggs on Saturday mornings, stirring the eggs around real fast to make them come apart, and he moved the pestle like that--fast, fast around the inside of the mortar. Little bits of rosemary flew up in the air, landing all over Sam's shirt and in his hair. The weight of Jane's hand on his shoulder stopped him

"No, not like that." She pushed some of the needles from another twig of rosemary into the mortar and put her hand over Sam's hand on the pestle. "Slower circles, and push down to grind it up without tossing it around." Her hand was steady, and by the time that first handful of rosemary was ground up into fine little bits Sam understood the movement, the rhythm. She showed him how to pour the ground-up herbs into a separate bowl and made sure he knew how to get more needles off the twigs before moving a few steps down on the workbench.

Sam pulled the mortar close to him again to keep it steady without Jane's strength, but he kept up her rhythm. Once he started he could close his eyes and inhale the scent of the rosemary. It made him feel awake but calm, and he could feel the smell of it all the way up his nose. Jane began to work with a larger mortar and pestle, and whatever she was grinding up smelled sharper, strange and musty like the feet of somebody who'd had the same sneakers and socks on for years and years. Sam didn't think it would taste very good in bread. She hummed a tune Sam didn't know, but it went just right with the work they were doing.

He would feel a prickling on the back of his neck from time to time and look up to see her watching him. She would smile, her eyes soft under the reddish cloud of her hair. He wanted to ask Dean if this was what having a mom was like. He wanted to ask Dad if Miss Jane could be their mom sometimes.

"Samuel Winchester," Jane said, sighing a little as she looked at him, her eyes sharper now. "You're your father's son, and that's all you need to know."


End file.
